Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King

So reminiscent of my childhood where I played Zelda and ate my box mac n cheese because nobody loved me.

A good Link to the Past Zelda-like. Good puzzle variety in dungeons, bosses have some interesting abilities with a little challenge without being over the top. Minimal post game content, but a good amount of map to explore with things to find. The tools and combat upgrades you unlock have good variety, but most of them and up being pointless outside of solving their specific puzzle.

In a nutshell, it's a nice little Zelda-like action-RPG. I needed ~21h for 100%. The whole story is somewhat forgettable and a bit silly, but I enjoyed most of the time I put into it and I got in on sale, so I give it thumbs up. The good The playtime and complexity are totally OK, the retro graphics looks somewhat nice, there is a lot to explore and most of the riddles are OK. Neither the boss fights nor the whole game are very hard, so it's a calm and enjoyable experience most of the time. There is a fast travel system and you can fast travel out/in the bigger dungeons. After beating the final boss, you can just continue playing and are even given a teleporter ring to teleport from everywhere to a teleporter stone. The not so good The map is almost unusable due to extremely low resolution, you can't mark anything on the map, there is nearly no quest log system. Only the sub-map is marked with a yellow border to indicate roughly where to go next for the main quest. There is no quest marker nor quest log for any side quest. There are some annoying passages where the path is crumbling and you need precision steering for a longer time but the controls are a bit too imprecise for tha…

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is an homage to Legend of Zelda: LTTP and it isn't trying to hide it. The game is full of clever puzzles and dungeon designs and this is where it really shines. Would recommend to anyone, especially those who enjoy retro games styled after the SNES era.

An average Zelda-clone. The game itself is fairly easy. What could be a challenge, can be tanked because you'll get heart upgrades quite often. There's also fullheal potions and revive flowers. The puzzles were fine and also rather easy. Some were annoying (I don't like Simon-says puzzles). The weapons were varied and if you've ever played a Zelda game you kinda know, what to expect: a bomb, a bow, some spells. Loved that you were able to get a triple-shot for the bow very early in the game. There's no amount limiting the use of any weapon but aside from sword and shield everything uses energy and even though there are some energy upgrades, they don't feel significant enough. Sadly, the "running boots" also use energy and just teleport you a short distance. Practically useless. Would have loved an upgrade or two for the sword's damage, but you also don't need to kill most of the enemies, they respawn after you switch the screen anyway. However, I really liked the pixelart art and different locations. And the soundtrack was catchy enough. Overall, I enjoyed my time with this game.

I really tried to give this game a chance but when it wasn't wasting my time it was annoying me. The puzzles and skill checks are either too easy or just annoying. Instead of being clever the game just uses complexity and chaos as you get deeper into the dungeons. Maybe its for you but I regret spending as much time on it as I have.